Not too long ago, a friend told me he was quiting his day job to try going out on his own as a freelance consultant/contractor and asked for some friendly advice regarding wages and billing practices.

I may not have been the ideal person to ask, as I had never worked in the exact market my friend was going into. On the other hand, in my twenties, a few years back I did work as a computer security consultant.

Lately, thanks mostly to Moonreader+ TTS on my phone I've been getting a lot more reading done. To my surprise I've become a stickler for 19th century classics. Besides being free, they're old enough to have stood the test of time but not so old that I have difficulty relating to them.

Here are a handful of recommended classics I found particularly enjoyable:

Microsoft is a trainwreck. I used to abhor the desktop monpolist as an
evil threat to standards-based open source innovation. But in the last
decade they've been screwing up so badly I almost feel sorry for them.
As much as you can feel sorry for a massive corporation that is.

One thing that puzzles me in particular is how Microsoft fails to grasp
that their efforts to compete with Google in the search space are a
pointless waste of countless billions and a lethal distraction that has
allowed Apple to wipe the floor with them in the post-PC era.

Phone vs e-mail

Alon and I usually shy away from handling things over the phone because it requires coordination (especially when you have different time zones), breaks up our work-flow, and isn't self documenting.

In fact, when I'm working I usually put my phone on silent and as far from reach as possible because nothing breaks up my concentration like a phone call. E-mail I can send and reply to in my own sweet time. A phone demands your attention this very instance. Drop everything and talk to me right now!

For a while now I've been interested in experimenting with stuff that can improve mental functioning so I've spent some time researching nootropics (a broad class of psycho-active supplements) in depth.